Projects

I'm going to use this to share some of my projects (past, present, and future). 

Ideas

I'm going to use this to share some of my ideas.

Voluntourism

After returning from my trip several people have asked for my thoughts and recommendations on traveling internationally to volunteer (aka "voluntourism"). It's a very multifaceted subject, and though I'm no expert nor do I really have my thoughts well sorted out, I've found the majority of people to be uninformed about the complexities. This article does a good job of presenting some of the points worth thinking about.

http://matadornetwork.com/change/why-you-shouldnt-participate-in-voluntourism/

"... To what degree your next journey to volunteer abroad will be one or the other depends a great deal on how you are able to honestly confront some difficult questions about why you are going, who you are going for, and whether you are participating in a project that – in the fine detail – is going to be a force for good. You may find yourself surprised at how quickly the most straightforward school-building project can become an exercise in self-analysis. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also absolutely necessary."

Presentation

As you all know, I spent the year between Nov 2011 and Nov 2012 travelling all over the world, visiting friends and family along the way and having all sorts of different adventures. One of my goals on this trip was to keep the number of flights I took to a minimum. As a result, I racked up a lot of days and distance on trains and buses; including the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Canadian routes. 

On February 7th I gave a  presentation about the trip for the Outdoor Recreation Center at the Colorado School of Mines. An hour and twenty minutes wasn't nearly enough time to say everything I wanted to say, but it was really great to finally get the whole story out in one continuous burst. Here's the recording: http://youtu.be/gO9gMQ6nCOw

I apologize for the audio quality - the laptop with the microphone was sitting on a table at the side of the screen, so as I move about and face the audience my voice comes and goes.

I hope it goes without saying that there are numerous errors and omissions in this presentation. I didn't spend much time rehearsing it, and I was tailoring my story to the audience of students and friends present at the time. Please forgive me if I misrembered, misrepresented, or completely left out something of importance to you. 

A PDF copy of the presentation (at the bottom) and copies of the videos I shared can be found here:  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wxws5slbzmq9tt4/xIwjq9L0Tu?lst

A big thanks to everyone who came to watch, and an even bigger thanks to all of the people during the course of my travels who helped in anyway they could and made it such a memorable year!

Here are the links I mention toward the end: 
https://www.couchsurfing.org
http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page
http://www.seat61.com/
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/index.jspa

Stay tuned. I still plan to continue blog-stories from where I left off in Poland on through to my arrival in Colorado. Putting together this presentation was good motivation, so expect more posts in the near-ish future. 

Squamish

So, this doesn't count as a real post, but I just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive. The road trip was successful; much fun was had by all. I'm currently in Squamish, but I plan to head down to Seattle in the next couple days to spend some time visiting people in that area while I look for somewhere to stay month-to-month for a bit. Once I get settled there, I'll pick back up where I left off in Europe on my trip around the world. Photos and stories to come - stay tuned. 

Leaving Anchorage

Today, Martyna and I have finally gotten the car packed and all of the goodbyes said. We're ready to hit the road. Unfortunately the weather isn't nearly as nice as it has been the last couple days, but I'm sure we'll find some sunshine somewhere between here and Vancouver. 

Anyway, here is a map that is going to make it look like we have a much better plan than we actually do, so don't be confused - this is very much just a rough outline and will surely be subject to many revisions along the way. Having said that, here is our tentative plan.

View AK road trip 2012 in a larger map

No Plans

Here's the most recent iteration of the answer to that persistent question, "What is Thomas doing next?" As I hope most of you know by now, I've decided to quit my job in Anchorage and move out of Alaska. Sometime around August 28th I'm going to begin a road trip through Alaska and part of Western Canada with my friend Martyna. She has to catch a flight in Vancouver, BC on September 16th, so we will make it at least that far by then. 

After we reach Vancouver, I don't have any real plans (and I kind of like it that way). I think I would enjoy finding somewhere to call "home" for two or three months while I hunt for a perfect job (suggestions welcome) and digest all of the experiences I've had during of my far-too-rapid trip around the globe, but I don't know where that will be. The idea of living and working somewhere in the Northwest (Vancouver, Kelowna, Bellingham, Portland, Seattle, Bend, Bozeman, .... suggestions?) really appeals to me in many ways, but with the world at my fingertips, who knows where I will be a few months time?

TLDR: Quit job; moving toward Seattle; no real plans; lots of options. 

Alaska is making it hard to say good bye.

Fun fact: I've been moving my belongings around in those same red plastic milk crates at least since 2004 when I left Missouri for Colorado. They are front and center in the image below. 

This image is from 2004 when I was moving out of Missouri to begin university in Colorado. I still use the same red plastic milk crates to haul my stuff around. And that pillow case is still in use as well; thanks Grandma!

Central Europe (part 1)

After Scandinavia, my next stop was Hamburg, in Northern Germany. True to my original goal, I planned almost all of my stops in Central Europe to be in places where I could visit friends. In Hamburg, that friend was Cassi. Her and I (along with 50 other students) spent our last two years of high school taking classes together and sharing a dorm at a residential math and science program in Missouri (MASMC). The last time I had seen Cassi was at our graduation, just over eight years ago.

Despite the elapsed time, I immediately felt at home staying with Cassi and Stefan, her German boyfriend. They are both working on physics PhDs at the university in Hamburg, which means, in addition to showing me my third experimental physics lab since December (Berkeley, Mines, Max Planck), they indulged my nerdy-side with many meandering conversations about lofty subjects.
But my time in Hamburg wasn't all about quantum particles and climate change, we also watched the better part of three Euro-cup games. After Germany won the first game, the subway ride home was quite an experience: full of gold, red, and black facepaint and flags and lots of chanting (check out the video).

The weather in Hamburg during my stay was often overcast or rainy and not as warm as I would have hoped. That combined with the fact that I was still recovering from my Norway/Sweden sickness meant I didn't spend as much time exploring the city as I would have otherwise. I enjoyed sampling some of the different tastes the city had to offer, and I left with a positive impression, but the real highlight of my time there was spending time with Cassi again and getting to know Stefan. Thanks guys!

I have spent an awful lot of time during my travels working on itineraries and logistics. Sometimes I really enjoy it – it's like an optimization problem with difficult to quantify parameters, which is something that really appeals to my engineering nature. But other times it's just a pain the butt. Either way it's one of the most difficult-to-share parts of my my trip, so stick with me for a moment as I try to give you a little taste of the madness.

The number of options, revisions, hostels, trains, buses, flights, prices, sights, hosts, and visas I've pursued and not realized is at least ten times greater than the number I've actually taken. For example, the original post-Hamburg plan was to begin a clockwise circle though Dresden, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, and then back up through Frankfurt to Belgium and Amsterdam. This seemed be a great way to maximize my 10-day Eurorail pass as well. While in Hamburg, I figured out that running the same circle in a counter-clockwise direction would only add a couple hundred kilometers to my total travel distance, but would allow me greater flexibility to spend more time in places I hadn't seen before (e.g. Switzerland) if I liked them, or if I didn't, I could continue and spend that extra time in places I knew I enjoyed (i.e. Dresden).

This new-new plan seemed like a superb idea, so I left Hamburg and stopped for a couple days in warm and sunny Freiburg near the Black Forest and close to the German-Swiss-French border. I had a great time there enjoying the weather and university-town feel. My plan was off to a great start.

Overlooking Freiburg

Until, that is, I discovered just the night before I was supposed to leave Freiburg, that the weather was foretasted to be overcast and rainy the whole time I would be in Switzerland. My dreams of photographing beautiful sunny meadows while strolling through the Alps were clouding over. What to do?! I was already in southwest Germany, so going back to the orignal clockwise route wasn't a very good option. I looked into overshooting Switzerland and spending a couple days in sunny northern Italy or southern France while I waited for the weather to improve, but by the time I traveled there and back, neither place seemed like it would be worth it. I could also choose to skip Switzerland completely and move on to Austria, but I was really looking forward to spending some time in the mountains. I decided to wait until the morning to see if the forecast would improve.

By morning nothing had changed; there was still a 70% chance of rain. Since my rail-pass was based on days of travel rather than distance, I decided I would go ahead and take 5 hour train ride to Interlaken and see how the weather looked in person. If it looked bad, I would still have time on that day's pass to make it to somewhere else. Getting on a train in the morning without knowing which city or country you plan to sleep in that night is an interesting feeling.

It was sunny and gorgeous when I arrived, but the locals said a storm was moving in that afternoon. I opted to go for a quick swim in the lake and then take a train on the scenic route to Zurich where I would connect with an overnight sleeper train to Vienna, Austria. As long as I didn't hit any more delays, I would have time and rail-pass days enough to visit Interlaken again between Dresden and Frankfurt. This new-new-new schedule would allow me to be in both of those cities on weekends when my friends had more free time, which was good, but it meant my counter-clockwise loop was quickly turning into a convoluted figure eight.

The overnight train was uneventful, but I didn't sleep terribly well. I got to Vienna a little tired, but in pretty good spirits. I was lucky to find a really nice hostel in Vienna. Even though I arrived hours before I could check-in to my room, they offered me a shower, a place to store my luggage, and discount on breakfast. After I got to my room later that afternoon, I found the hostel was to be clean and full of friendly staff and travelers, including a group of Swedes who I believe are still reading this blog :) .... If you're ever in Vienna, consider Wombats.

The purpose of stopping in Vienna was to reconnect with Chrissi whom I had first met earlier this year in Antigua, Guatemala. I enjoyed the conversations Chrissi and I had in Guatemala about environmentalism and travelling, and the chance to wander around Vienna with a native Austrian was too good to pass up. It was very hot and sunny during my couple days in Austria, near 90F, so Chrissi and I spent the better part of the day doing what the locals do on a hot day: sunbathing and swimming in the canal.

I have trouble saying no to a good bridge-jump. 

I'm afraid I don't have any particularly insightful comments on Austrian culture or cuisine. The one thing that does stick out with me is that as I traveled a bit east from Germany and Switzerland to Austria, I could definitely feel the Eastern influence. I believe Austrians prefer to be thought of as "Central" European, some kind of cultural crossroads - which is definitely true, but the food, dress, and customs that I saw during my short  stay in Vienna reminded me more of what I saw in Russia than Northern Germany.

Well, that's all I have for now. My next post will talk about my time in Poland, Germany (again), Switzerland (again), and possibly Belgium/Holland. We'll see how far lost in the details I get while typing it up.

In the mean-time, if you want to "read ahead" you can look at the maps (complete all of the way back to Anchorage) and photo albums. I've already uploaded all of the photos for all of my stops in Germany, both stops in Switzerland, and of course, Austria. I'm still fighting with getting some of the videos on line, so you might want to check back later (or subscribe using google plus).

.... And to keep you interested, here's a sneak-peak photo from my five-day ferry ride to Alaska. Too bad you'll have to wait though the rest of Europe and Canada before you get to hear that story :)

Scandinavia

In my last post I recounted some of my stories from Russia, and I left off just as I was departing from St. Petersburg, headed for Helsinki. In this post I'll talk about Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Unfortunately, it has been over a month since I left those places, and the details of my stops have already faded a bit. Accept my apologies for the bullet-pointy format.

Helsinki, Finland 

The overnight bus (rather than train or ferry) from St. Petersburg to Helsinki seemed like a good idea logistically – I wouldn't have to waste precious daylight hours on a relatively uninteresting bus ride and could spend more time sightseeing. I knew the sleep wouldn't be great in the bus, but what I got was way worse than expected. Even though it was overnight, we stopped every 2 hours for one reason or another. And I think we spent 2 or 3 hours at the border crossing around 1 am.

To make the trip even worse, the Russian border agent (who didn't speak English) seemed to think my passport was fake. I'll admit my photo is a little old and my hair has changed, but why would I be trying to sneak out of Russia with a fake American passport? Russia requires all tourist to register their location with the local post office if they stay in any one city more than 3 days and at least once within 5 business days of entering the country. I had even gone thruogh all of that silliness, but it didn't seem to make the border agent any happier. What ultimately satisfied her was a laminated photocopy of my Alaska driver's license. If I could counterfeit a passport, I'm sure I could fake a photocopy of a driver's license, but I wasn't going to argue.

The last straw for the night, and luckily the last thing I had to deal with (other than mosquitoes) before going back to sleep, was the Finish border agent. He took my passport, looked through all the pages with stamps from the last several months, stamped me in to Finland (and effectively the rest of Europe), and then asked standard “are you traveling alone?” I said that I was. He said “ok,” handed my passport back to me, and said “But, doesn't it get lonely?” …..  I just said “yes,” and walked away.

In Helsinki I stayed with a wonderful couchsurfer named Riikka. She gave me a great place to sleep, and I really enjoyed spending time with her and her roommates. Here are some of the more memorable things from Helsinki.

• Immediately felt like home - Helsinki looks, smells, and feels like Anchorage in many ways. It's about the same latitude as Anchorage, so the days were long, and many of the plants and animals were familiar. 
• Visiting couchsrufer friend Jose - Jose couchsurfed with me in Alaska 3 years ago. It was an interesting contrast to meet up with her again on the other side of the world for a fancy business lunch rather than instant rice in remote Alaskan hut. 
• Trail run - In Helsinki I went for a trail run for the first time in what felt like forever. There's a giant park/forest in town that has lots of dirt paths and trail lights for groomed crosscountry skiing in the winter. 
• Sauna - I finally got to have a nordic style sauna experience, complete with a vasta "massage" (ie beating). I wish I could have compared it to the Russian banya, but alas, I didn't have time in Russia.  
• Back in the Western world - Since Indonesia, each place I've visited has been culturally more and more similar to the US, but unlike the gradual changes in customs and traditions I experienced at past border crossings, going from Russia to Finland was something of a step change. The people immediately looked and acted in ways I was more familiar with. There were a lot of English speakers; the streets, shops, and foods weren't so foreign; and the freedom and quality of life were noticeably higher. 
• Ferry to Stockholm - In Helsinki, I picked up my 10-day Eurail pass which gave me a discount on the overnight ferry through the Baltic sea to Stockholm. Calling it a ferry seems a bit dishonest in light of the casino, fancy restaurants, and up scale accommodation, but it did carry cars, and I was able to get a cheap, comfortable bed.  

vasta

Stockholm, Sweden

In Stockholm I spent two nights at an over crowded hostel full of music-festival goers, but in spite of that and the bad weather, I still had a pretty good time. 

• Stockholm is a beautiful city, full of old buildings and well dressed people on lots and lots bicycles. The city's location - spread over a tight cluster of islands situated in a brackish lake that connects to the Baltic - makes it especially scenic. 
• My friend suggested kayaking as a good way to see and experience the city. He was right, but unfortunately it rained the whole 4 hours I was in the boat. It was still a good time, but I wouldn't have said no to some sunshine. 
• In Stockholm I met up with yet another long lost friend. This time it was Kathie, whom I had spent a lot of time with during my summer in Dresden (Germany) five years before. Kathie is working as something like a tour guide on a cruise ship in the Baltic. I adjusted my schedule to overlap with their one-day stop in Stockholm. Unfortunately this meant that we only got to spend part of an evening together, but it was better than nothing. As I've said before, it's very strange meeting someone for a second time whom you thought you would probably never see again. It is the bitter-sweet reality of having friends spread across the world.  

Approaching Stockholm

Nice Swedish dinner with Kathie

Working on a blog post on the train

Bergen, Norway

• Train ride to Bergen - From Stockholm I activated my rail pass and took a train to Oslo, and then on to Bergen. The trip through the mountains between Oslo and Bergen was absolutely gorgeous. Maybe it was partly due to the fact that I had not see any big mountains in a long time, but I really enjoyed staring out the window from my comfortable seat on the train. The topography and geology of a place is something that I consume and appreciate like most people do ethnic cuisines. The people don't (usually) make the landscape, but the landscape often makes the people.  
• I spent my first night in Bergen in a hostel because I had been lazy about sending out couchsurfing requests. Unfortunately, some combination of the crowded hostel in Stockholm, kayaking in the rainy wind, and long travel days, resulted in my catching a nasty cold. I woke up the next morning feeling worse than I had since that stomach bug in Guatemala. Much to my surprise, and good fortune (hostels in Norway are expensive), an amazing couchsurfer named Sasha agreed to host me despite my infirm state. I was reluctant to stay with her for fear of getting her or her roommates sick, but she graciously insisted. It was impressively kind of her - I was given great bed to sleep in, allowed to stay home and rest all day while she was gone, and she cooked some tasty food for me. I did what I could to be a good guest, but I'm afraid the karma flow was mostly in one direction this time. After a few days I was in much better shape and ready see a little of Bergen and then continue with the rest of my trip. 
• I took the "scenic route" when leaving Bergen: First a bus to the Hardangerfjord, where I connected with a ferry that went through part of Sorfjor and Eidfjord before dropping me in the tiny village of Ulvik. In Ulvik I caught a bus to Voss (probably the extreme sports capital of Norway). This mini-trip was very scenic, and thus the source of the majority of my photos from Norway. Nice weather and abundant fjords, waterfalls and glaciers is a good way to exhaust a camera battery.
•  From Voss, I took the midnight train to Oslo. Train beds are very expensive in Norway, so I spent the night attempting to sleep upright and wishing I was back on a Russian train. In Oslo, I caught a train to Copenhagen, and from Copenhagen another train to into Hamburg. The train between Copenhagen and Hamburg crosses from Denmark to Germany on a ferry. The entire train actually pulls onto a ferry for the 45 minute crossing - now there's a creative engineering solution. And speaking of engineering, while on the ferry, I met a young guy from Colorado who is studying at my alma mater, the Colorado School of Mines. Small world. 

Bergen

Amazing host, Sasha and an amazing salmon dinner. 

Ferry ride through the Fjord

In Hamburg I met up with Cassi, a friend from my time at the MASMC, whom I hadn't seen since graduation, a little over 8 years ago. I'll pick up with that story in my next post.

The photo albums that go with this post can be found here: Finland, Sweden, Norway.

And even though my blog is a month behind, the map is up to date. As you can see, I'm currently in Bellingham, WA. Tomorrow I'll begin the four-day ferry ride back to Anchorage. I'm excited to be back!

It has been a long trip - I'm exhausted in many ways - and even though I'll be "home" in less than a week, the real adventure is just getting ready to start. More on that, coming soon. 

Russia

Irkutsk / Baikal (Ирку́тск / Байка́л)

The night train from Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia took me all the way to Irkutsk without any problems. We did have to spend 2 (or was it 3?) hours at the border crossing in the middle of the night while they checked our passports and made sure we weren't smuggling any people or things into Russia. I'm happy to say the border agents didn't give me any problems with my passport on the way in; the visa I put so much effort into obtaining worked like a charm.  
Irkutsk is known as “The Paris of Siberia,” and it's the closest large city to Lake Baikal, so it seemed like it would be worth a couple days visit. And it was. The city itself is very nice to stroll around in. It's right on the banks of the Angara river which is very clear, clean, and cold – perfectly safe to drink if you ask the locals. From the looks of it, I believe them, but I didn't want to tempt my fate by testing their claim. 
The city also has a rich cultural history which is evident through some of it's architecture and museums. I'll probably get this wrong (feel free to correct me), but the way I understand it, back in the day the Decemberists were kicked out of Moscow and exiled to Siberia. Many of the Decemberists were the great artists, musicians, and intellectuals of their time, so when they all settled in the frontier-town of Irkutsk, they created a rather interesting mix of a city. 

Unfortunately, and in an uncomfortably sharp contrast to the previous weeks of my travel, much of my time in Irkutsk was cold and rainy. It even snowed a little the day I arrived (May 26)! The weather limited my time exploring the beauty of the city, but luckily I had found a last minute couchsurfing host who, in addition to feeding me some great food, took me on a walking tour of the city in the cold blowing rain. I definitely wouldn't have had the will to do that by myself. It's good to have other people around to help motivate you.
I got out of town during a break in the weather for a short visit to Lake Baikal (and it's science center). This is the deepest, most voluminous, and oldest lake in the world. And I think I read it contains 25% of the worlds liquid freshwater. I could list off some more statistics about the lake, but really you would be better off reading the wikipedia article yourself. The lake was an impressive sight. It's huge, clear, and cold and the mountains and forest that surround it just added to the beauty. And they sell great-tasting smoked Omul at roadside stands around the lake.

An interesting side story: To get to the lake you take these normal looking vans which have had the seating modified to cram as many people in as possible (seatbelts? never heard of them). These are pretty common across Russia; they run on fixed routes like buses; and they aren't so different from the collectivos in Central America. Anyway, on this bus/van the older lady who happened to sit across from me spoke really good English. This was surprising for two reasons: it seems not many in Russia (especially eastern Russia) speak English at all unless they worked in tourism, and generally those people are relatively young. Also, studying English wasn't a very high priority 30 or 40 years ago in Russia. It was really nice to have someone to talk to. Then, a little while later when a mother, father, and their ten year old daughter got on and took the seats next to me, I was surprised to encounter an English speaker once again. Not the mom or the dad, but the 10 year old! She told me all about her home town and a couple places she really wants to visit (including London) in travel-guide level detail and style. When I started asking questions it became apparent that she had essentially memorized these descriptions, but her pronunciation and British accent were so good that I kept forgetting that her comprehension and vocabulary still had some catching up to do. Incredibly impressive for being only 10 years old! 

Novosibrisk (Новосиби́рск)

From Irkutsk I took a 30 hour train to Novosibirsk, making my way toward Moscow (and the terminus of the Trans Siberian Railroad) little by little. Even though Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia, it isn't a typical tourist stop. The city isn't especially old or beautiful and there aren't really any interesting sights near-by (except maybe the Altya mountains). But I had a good reason to stop: my friend Anya lives there. I met Anya through couchsurfing.org a little over a year ago when we were both in Chicago. As we were both there on business-trips, we didn't need couches to sleep on, but the website also has features that help travelers meet other travelers. Eating alone in restaurants after work while traveling gets old fast, so we were both happy to have some company. 

Novosibirsk - prettier than I give it credit for being.

Birthday party for Yulia with Anya and her friends on the Ob Sea. 

As with many of my distant friends, Anya and I were able to stay in touch through the magic of email and facebook. And I'm glad we did. There might not be many sights Novosibirsk, but I enjoyed getting a taste of “real,” non-touristy, Russia. Visiting with Anya, meeting her friends and family, seeing how they live, observing differences and similarities, and taking a step back to absorb it all in a place where I could blend in to the crowd was well worth the stop. And it was really nice to be staying at a friend's house after so many weeks in trains, buses, hostels and couchsurfers. There's an extra level of comfort you feel when staying with someone you've known for a while. Anya was a great host, and it was really nice to have a few days break from the traveling life.

Moscow (Москва)

The train ride from Novosibirsk to Moscow was about 50 hours and crossed 2 time zones. It is the longest nonstop segment I've taken thus far, and it definitely felt like it (the train I'll take from Toronto to Vancouver at the end of July will be longer; almost 4 days in total). The first day I slept and read and slept some more. Every couple hours or so the train makes a longer (10-20 minute) stop so you can get out, walk around on the platform, and buy ice cream and other snacks. It breaks up the monotony, but it doesn't make time move any faster. By the middle of the second day I had finished listening to all of the podcasts I had downloaded and read all that I wanted to know about Moscow and St.Petersburg. I had even finished reading half of Cat's Cradle, but my eyes were too tired to keep going. In spent a lot of time staring out the window.... 

In Moscow, after my early morning arrival and subsequent hours at a coffeshop, I met with a couchsurfer, coincidentally also named Anya, who had responded to my post the city-wide message board. She had free time that day, and said she would enjoy showing me around part of the city. This was particularly fortunate for me because my time in Moscow was very limited. In an effort to save more time for my friends later in the trip, I had decided to spend only 16 hours in Moscow: I arrived at 5:30 AM and departed on yet another sleeper train 9:30 PM. As I'm (apparently) fond of saying, efficiency was key, and having a local at my side definitely helped. With Anya I visited the Red Square, Kremlin, St. Basil Cathedral, the Lomonosov University, a scenic ski lift, Victory Park, and several other lesser known sites. It was really great to have my own “guide” for the day – someone to talk to, show me things I wouldn't have discovered on my own, answer the random cultural questions that pop up in my head, and help me navigate yet another giant subway system.
My general impression of Moscow was a positive one. It was a much bigger city than anything I had seen since Beijing, and it was the most “Western” feeling cities I had been in since Los Angeles. From the perspective of an American, Moscow was unmistakeably European  – cobble stones, winding streets, parks, central squares, etc, etc – but writing this from a Polish train after having visited Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, I can see how Moscow still had a very Russian feel, especially in the architecture and, of course, the customs and traditions of the people . The same applies below for St. Petersburg, but to a lesser extent: more European than Moscow, but distinctly Russian.

At the end of the fast-paced day in Moscow we met with two other couchsurfers for dinner, and then I made a mad dash for the train. I was almost late due to confusion over which train station was the correct one for my train (there are 3 major ones within less than a city-block of each other), but luckily I made it and was able to get some good sleep on my way to Russia's “Venice of the North.”

St Petersburg (Санкт-Петерб́ург)

I wouldn't expect any of you to remember, but I had originally planned to go immediately to Poland after Moscow – which is not at all in the direction of St. Petersburg. After my almost-mistake regarding the Vietanamese visa, I took the lesson to heart and double checked the visa requirements for the rest of my trip. I discovered that unless I wanted spend 3 days in Moscow and pay for a Belorussian transit visa, my best over-land option for connecting to Poland was a someway tenuous route through Ukraine that didn't sound like much fun (a plane would have been cheaper and faster, but remember that one of my primary goals is minimize the number of flights I take). As an alternative to the Ukraine, I saw that there was a land border between Russian and Finland, nearby to both St.Petersburg and Helsinki. Scandinavia is a place I wanted to see anyway, and I knew I could make a connection to Poland from Germany later in the trip if I still wanted to satisfy my urge to visit my great-grandmother's homeland. Avoiding a visa and visiting Europe's "Land of the Midnight Sun" was enough to send me on my way to St. Petersburg. 
As with Moscow, I arrived quite early in the morning, and as usual, my first step was to figure out exactly where I was in the giant city. A usual safe be is to find a nearby tourist map, subway station, or bus stop, as these often have “You Are Here” markers or identifiable landmarks. (Travel tip: once you've found one of these maps, take a photo of it so you can look it up on your camera later when you're lost again.) After finding myself, my next concern is usually figuring out where to sleep that night – luckily I had already made contact with a young married couple on couchsurfing, Yanis and Yulia, so instead of wandering around until I found a hostel with free beds as I did in Irkutsk, I just jumped on a subway train headed toward their apartment. 
Yanis and Yulia were simply amazing! They were welcoming, fun to talk to, and very sympathetic to needs of a worn out traveler. They offered me some good food, let me shower (much needed after 3 nights in the train), and then I went back out to explore part of the UNESCO World Heritage city - taking advantage of the long daylight hours at nearly 60 degrees North. I took some photos, walked around, and enjoyed hearing more English speakers in one place than I had since Thailand 
The biggest highlight of St. Petersburg, aka Leningrad, was the Herimtage Museum. I could type pages and pages about the Hermitage, but you're probably better of reading a more eloquent source, looking at the virtual tour and taking a peak at my photos to get an idea of the things that I saw. It's huge place, and the 4 or 5 hours I spent there weren't even close to enough time to really enjoy it. Overall, it's a very impressive collection of art and artifacts that are presented in an up-close and personal way within an even more impressive Russian Palace (since when did I become an architecture fan?!). The collection is sometimes compared to the Louve in terms of significance and magnitude. As you would expect, it's crawling with tourists, but the place is big enough to handle the crowds. 

Church of the Savior - St. Petersburg. 

Hermitage Square

Crouching Boy by Michelangelo 

After three days in St. Petersburg it was time to leave, but I had to decide by what method. There are buses, trains, boats, and of course, air planes all providing connection to Helsinki. Airplanes were ruled out on account of principle, the boats looked expensive, and the trains were about twice the price of the buses, so I found myself on an overnight bus to Finland. The bus ride was a memorable one, but I'm currently tired of typing, so I'll save that for next time.


I always have more things I want to say and stories to tell than I have time or energy to type. Russia is no exception. Let me know if there's anything I didn't mention that you want to know about and I'll add it in. I'm writing this largely for your benefit, so I might as well do what I can to keep you happy. 


The maps and photo albums linked at the top of the page have been updated (lots from Russia and sneak peaks at Europe). Go check them out and let me know what you think!

Thailand, China, and Mongolia

View Sabbatical in a larger map


Well, once again I'm behind on my updates. I'm currently sitting on a ferry going from Helsinki, Finland to Stockholm Sweden. Obviously, both of those places are a long way from Indonesia, which is where I last left off. Sorry. 


A lot has happened since then, but in the interest of time and (hopefully) getting you all up to present-day in my story as soon as possible, I'm going to make this more a of a bullet-point summary of Southern and Eastern Asia. I feel bad about doing this because these were very interesting places and I have lots of stories to share – I just don't have time (or energy) to write about them right now. You'll just have to get the rest of the stories next time you see me :-) 


I think I've said before that I'm constantly trying to figure out the optimal balance for my time. It's always split between three things: enjoying and experiencing the current moment, writing about and digesting what happened in the past weeks, and planning/logistics for the coming weeks. All three are equally important, and somewhat mutually interdependent, but since I've been changing locations so frequently and covering so much ground so fast, my writing has been loosing in the tug-of-war. Alright, enough with the excuses.  


I knew before I started on it, that this section of my trip would be a bit different in that I would spend most of my time in transit, only stopping for layover and rest days, rather than taking time to actually get acquainted with places. This was a necessary evil in order to maximize the time I had to spend with friends. As I've said before, I know that I have much more fun visiting people I know rather than sightseeing by myself,  skipping out on some things along the way, for example, the Great Wall of China. 

Thailand

• A short flight from Jakarta, Indonesia to Kulua Lumpur, Malaysia, and then an overnight train on into Thailand. This was my first experience with sleeper trains. I enjoyed it. Way better than buses. It's a good thing that I liked it because there were many more nights on trains to come. 
• I stayed 2 nights at Railay Beach near Krabi, Thailand. A wonderful picturesque beach, with warm water, white sand, and lush jungle on all sides. Combine those with relatively cheap prices and great climbable limestone cliffs all over and you can understand why it's a favorite destination for climbers. 
• Overnight van/bus combo to Bangkok. The price was too good – I should have known something was fishy. We only stopped at places where the only food, water, and toilets in sight were owned by friends of the drivers. During the night, the luggage we had placed under the bus was searched for valuables. Unfortunately, this is something that is fairly common in Thailand (the bus drivers are in on it), so most of us kept our valuables in our carry-on bags. I slept with my small carry-on in my arms or with my feet in the straps in such a way that I would feel it if it were moved. The girl behind me had her backpack at her feet, but someone still stole her iPad. There is a lot that could be said about this, but worst part for me the is feeling that you and your stuff aren't really safe while you're sleeping. 
• Spent half a day in Bangkok waiting for the train headed for Laos. I visited Bangkok during my last trip to Thailand/Laos, so there wasn't much that I wanted to see, but I did enjoy getting out and seeing some new sections of the city. 

• The night train was uneventful. It felt very restful and secure compared to the night before. When we arrived in Laos the next morning, I was talking with some other travelers about my plans to continue on to Vietnam via bus later that day. They asked if it had been easy to get my visa for Vietnam. What visa?!? I had read that there was a visa-on-arrival option for Vietnam, but apparently even that option requires some kind of letter in advance. Quick research on the train (thankfully I had saved the info to my computer) revealed that getting the visa in Laos would take at least 3 days – days I would have to sacrifice from somewhere later in my schedule. I started looking for alternatives. Was there a way to get into China without going through Vietnam? Answer: Yes! The guy at the hostel said the bus was leaving for Kunming, China in less than 2 hours, so I had to make a decision fast. It wasn't an easy decision. First because it was a 50 hour bus trip on bumpy roads through a part of Laos and China that doesn't get tons of visitors. And second because it would put me on a completely unplanned route for at least the next 4 or 5 days. I would be back on on schedule by the time I got to Beijing, but I didn't know anything about the places or route in between. Also, keep in mind that I had spent the last night/day on a train and the night before that on a sketchy bus.   Contrary to what might seem like an obvious decision, I quickly bought some more food and drinking water and hopped on the bus.

• This was my first (and maybe last) trip on a sleeper bus. Instead of seats, they have narrow bunkbeds stacked 2 or 3 high. Apparently very common in China for long trips, and probably the most comfortable way you can spend a 50 hour bus ride. It's still a bus, and the roads are still bumpy, but it could have been worse. I slept a lot, looked out the window, listened to all of my podcasts and read travel guides. No one else on the bus spoke English, so the purpose of our stops was always a surprise – I had to watch everyone else to figure out if it was a food-, bathroom-, gas-, water-, or smoke-break. Not that we needed the smoke-breaks; everyone seemed perfectly happy to just smoke on the bus. :(

China

• Border crossing into China went over without a hitch. Hooray, my visa worked!
• I spent 3 nights in Kunming. I didn't do much sightseeing there, but I needed a couple days to recover after spending the last 4 nights in buses and trains in 3 different countries. In Kunming I stayed a very comfortable hostel and spent a lot of my time on my laptop figuring out train schedules to Beijing, Mongolia, and Russia, making couchsurfer connections in those places, and refining my schedule for parts of the trip further down the road (and double checking that I wasn't making any more silly mistakes like that visa for Vietnam). I did do a little sightseeing in Kunming. Check out the photos. 
• The train from Kunming to Beijing took 2 nights. I had a really good time on that train ride. It was clean and comfortable, and the 5 other people sharing my compartment/berth area were really friendly. One girl spoke pretty good English so she helped translate. The views out the windows during the day were pretty nice too. Small talk via translation and hand signs got old after a while, so I decided to see if they wanted to learn some knots. I had some rope (useful for many purposes when traveling), and knots are easy to share even without words. They loved it! Especially the grandma in the group – she kept calling me teacher and wanted to learn every knot I could show her. They kept practicing over and over until they got them all – bowline, square, figure eight, double fisherman's. I loved it too. [Yes, Chris Swift, I can hear you laughing already]. 

• I spent 2 nights in Beijing. Just enough time to have dinner with a couchsurfer, figure out how to book my train ticket to Mongolia (not as easy as you would expect), and see some of the main sights.  It might have been the weather or just the timing, but Beijing wasn't my favorite place. There were some nice things to see, and I'm sure even more nice things I didn't see, but I'm happy I didn't schedule a long stop there. 
• The train from Beijing to UlaanBaatar, the capital of Mongolia) worked out perfectly in the end, but but there was a lot of uncertainty initially. There are three options for getting to UB: 

1. Since this is the first leg of the Transmongolian Railway (one of the Transiberian routes), so you can buy a ticket on one of those trains. It will cost of about 200$US, takes 1 night, and departs twice a week. 
2. They attach an extra carriage to the back of the Transmonglian trains. The extra carriage stops at the border when the rest of the train continues into Mongolia. It's a lot cheaper since it's not international, but you have to get out at the border town, spend the night, and then cross the border the next day by jeep and catch a Mongolian train on the other side. Total cost around 60$US and takes 1 or 2 nights depending on the mongolian trains. 
3. The third option in a combo of 1 and 2. You buy a ticket for the cheap, non-international train carriage and then while you're en route, if there are extra beds in the international train you can pay the conductor for an upgrade at a highly discounted rate. But, if there aren't any extra beds, you have to fall back to option 2 and spend the night in the town in the middle of nowhere. Total cost of about 100$US and only 1 night. 

• I was lucky and option 3 worked for me! Upgrading to the international train also meant that I was, for the first time in about a week, traveling with other Westerners again. I enjoy traveling with locals and getting the immersion experience, but on those long trips sometimes it's nice to be able to speak English. 

This is where the track widths change from the standard size to the Russia size. The bogies have already been switched in this photo. 

Mongolia 

• I only spent 2 nights in UlaanBaatar, and since Mongolia is such a huge place with relatively poor transportation infrastructure, most of what I saw for Mongolia was from the train on the way to UB and from UB to Russia. What I saw from the windows was really beautiful, especially in the north: rolling hills covered in grass, semi-nomadic families living yurts (locally called “gers”), some of the cleanest looking water, and pretty rives. The southern part I didn't see as much of since we went through at night, but it's a lot of really big desert. 

• UB itself was interesting. It's a big city, but not very dense. They have a lot of room to spread out. Half of the country's population lives there, but the low density leads to a certain feeling of disorganization. There are some nice sights in town (see the photos) and the people were nice. I tried some traditional food, which as you would expect coming from a nomadic culture is largely based on animal products – meats and cheeses. I did like some of the foods (eg buuz ), but others (eg milk tea) I did not. 
• From UB, I took a train straight into Russia, all the way to Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal (oldest, deepest and most voluminous freshwater lake in the world), but you'll have to wait until the next post to hear about Russia. 

--- I updated the map, photos, and itinerary sections, so go check out the new additions in the links above ---